Thursday, November 3, 2011

Frank Hanavan

MackeyBlue will be hosting Frank Hanavan on the Hoboken Artists Studio Tour this Saturday and Sunday, November 5 and 6, from 12pm - 6pm.

Swing by MackeyBlue, Visit with Frank and Drink in his Dozen Paintings that Will Be on Display. Peruse and Go Home With Your Favorite!

Frank's Message:
Hi. Thanks for visiting my paintings here at MackeyBlue for the Hoboken Studio Tour! I want to thank Karen from MackeyBlue for hosting my exhibit and Geri Fallo and the Hoboken Office of Cultural Affairs. I couldn’t have this show without Karen and none of us on the tour could be here without Geri.

I have always been a “realist” painter, I paint realism. You would think that would be pretty unambiguous but take a look at how “realism” in painting is defined on wikipedia:

“....Realism refers to the general attempt to depict subjects “in accordance with secular, empirical rules” as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation. As such, the approach inherently implies a belief that such reality is ontologically independent of man’s conceptual schemes, linguistic practices and beliefs, and thus can be known (or knowable) to the artist, who can in turn represent this ‘reality’ faithfully. As Ian Watt states, modern realism “begins from the position that truth can be discovered by the individual through the senses” and as such “it has its origins in Descartes and Locke, and received its first full formulation by Thomas Reid in the middle of the eighteenth century....”

Pretty heady stuff. I have been painting in realism since I was a kid and I had no idea that all this time realism “ was ontologically independent of man’s conceptual schemes, linguistic practices and beliefs.” Whatever that means. Doesn’t ontology have to do with teeth? No?

I keep it simple. I paint in acrylic on canvas and I try to capture qualities of light in subject matter that appeals to my sense of “what looks good”. I paint what I see and try to make the painting look like the subject I’m painting. Sure there are a lot of subtleties involved but I felt the Wikipedia article was a bit overblown.